Vt. Town Clerk's Retirement Ends Era

KRISTA LARSON

Published
7:00 pm EST, Tuesday, March 4, 2003

Associated Press Writer

For 53 years, town clerk Miriam Nelson has been the very model of Yankee thrift and industry.

Five days a week, she faithfully opened her office at 9 a.m. and painstakingly handled tax bills and deeds and recorded all births, deaths and marriages in town, mostly by typewriter, but sometimes by computer, though with a little help.

On Tuesday, at age 81, she finally retired, marking not only the end of an era in the town of 214 but also the end of a family dynasty. Since 1885, the year the town clerk position was created in this community on the Canadian border, only three people have held the post, all of them from the same family.

"All good things must come to an end," Nelson said as she went about filing on one of her last days at the office.

Great-uncle Albert McLean was the town's first clerk 118 years ago, and then her father, Edward, assumed the post in 1911. Nelson first began helping at the office when she was too young to see over the clerk's counter. When she was 28, her father appointed her assistant clerk.

After her father died unexpectedly, town selectboard members chose her in 1949 to fill out his term. She has been serving ever since.

"My father always told us, `Always do your share and more,'" she recalled.

The town clerk's office was essentially a family business. Nelson's brother, Wilmot, now 88, once served as the assistant town clerk. He shared that position over the years with their 90-year-old sister, Ruth, who also served as justice of the peace and only recently retired herself.

When couples in the town got married, Ruth would officiate without charge, and Miriam would issue the marriage license. Afterward, the sisters would sometimes throw a wedding celebration at their home, and Ruth would bake the couple a cake.

Nelson served the town at the lowest cost possible. She made about $200 a year, and the clerk's office, has remained rent-free to the town in a corner of what used to be the Nelson family's general store.

"My father, he really didn't want to see the town in debt, so I thought I would follow in his footsteps," she said. "So my salary isn't that great, we don't charge any rent. They don't pay for the electric bill and fuel. If the town had to pay that, taxes would be a lot higher."

Over the years, she has gone to painstaking efforts to keep Norton in the black, even hand-delivering property tax bills so the town would not have to pay for postage.

Town Selectboard Chairman Franklin Henry said Nelson has always gone the extra mile to help her customers. Just last week, someone coming in to get a deed recorded had only cash, he recalled. Nelson offered to save the customer the $3 fee for a money order by depositing the money in the bank and writing the check herself.

"You couldn't find anybody that would be more committed than her and more dedicated," Henry said.

None of the three Nelson siblings had children, and so now with her retirement, the office is changing families and its location, too, because the old general store is more room than the town needs and its location is inconvenient.

The store _ Nelson was born upstairs and continues to live right next door with her brother and sister _ is literally on the border between Stanhope, Quebec, and the town of Norton. U.S. and Canadian flags mark the northern and southern parts of the building, where customers from both countries once shopped and paid for goods with their respective currencies.

"Because of the fact that it's on the line, it's a hassle," Nelson said. "When people come here to pay their taxes, they don't think they've been to Canada. The officers will come out and say, `You've been to Canada. You need to come here and report.'"

The people of Norton honored Nelson's service Tuesday night by giving her a standing ovation at the annual town meeting held at the community's two-room schoolhouse. She was presented with a plaque and a corsage, and afterward there was cake and punch.

"Everybody has been so nice and kind that I didn't have any tears," she said.

She said she will miss talking to the people who drop by and keeping up on news of the town. But she said it will probably take awhile for that reality to sink in. After all, Nelson noted, Wednesday has been her day off for more than half a century.

"I was brought up in this, and so I don't know what it's going to be like," she said.